Game Manager 4.15

A Media Centre-type application to help organise your games

By Mike Williams | 03 Feb 2017

Game Manager is Windows tool with a host of game-related functions.

At its simplest you can use the program just as an attractive launcher. It's able to download screen grabs, box art, banners and more, there are multiple ways to sort, organise and display your game collection via its wide-screen Media Centre-style interface, and you can launch your preferred option in a click or two.

If you use DAEMON Tools or Alcohol 120% to create and mount images of your game discs then Photon Game Manager can simplify the process, by automatically mounting the images when needed, and removing them when you're done.

When you need to record a stand-out game moment, Game Manager can take screen grabs for you, then organise and display these later. (Of course you can do this from most games anyway, but having a single capture tool to work across all your games does make life simpler.)

And the program can also keep your games up-to-date, by downloading and installing official patches as they appear.

This isn't quite as good as it sounds, unfortunately. The initial setup in particular can be difficult; in theory the program can automatically search for your games, or you can add them manually, but neither option is particularly intuitive and even when we thought we'd successfully added something, Game Manager still resolutely refused to display it.

Still, if you can bypass that hurdle then there's plenty of power here, so if you're a keen gamer then it may be worth a (brief) look.

Please note, Game Manager is free for up to 5 games only. After that you must purchase a licence for around $15.

Verdict

Game Manager 4 looks good and provides access to lots of useful features, if you can get it set up properly, but an awkward setup process means that can be a problem. Give it a try, but don't be surprised if you have problems at first.